


The Long Night

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Akai Chou | Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Community: areyougame, Dark, Gen, Missing Scene, POV Minor Character, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2011-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to twins that don't turn into butterflies?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://areyougame.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://areyougame.dreamwidth.org/)**areyougame** , for the prompt: _Fatal Frame 2, Mutsuki & Itsuki: guilt - forever preserved in this moment_

"What happens to twins that don't turn into butterflies?"

The bars on the window cast thin, dark shadows on the floor and the desk where Itsuki sometimes sat, turning the unmarked pages of his diary.

"I always used to wonder," Mutsuki said. "I asked you once, but you didn't want to talk about it. Do you remember?"

Itsuki paced back and forth. Three long strides from one wall of the cell to the other; four small ones. He looked out of the window every time he reached it, watching the path that led into the village from Misono Hill. The villagers had gone that way, hunting Yae and Sae, but they hadn't returned yet.

"I thought we'd just disappear," Mutsuki went on. "Like candles going out. I never told you how scared I was of that. But I was wrong – even though I couldn't be a butterfly, we still became one. I'm still part of you. We were wrong about a lot of things, weren't we?"

The cool breeze blew in through the window, bringing the fragrance of summer greenery, of rain and lightning on the way. Itsuki stood still a moment, letting the breeze lift his hair.

"You haven't written anything in your diary tonight," Mutsuki observed. "That's not like you." He knew why, but pretending didn't hurt. It was too late to make a difference one way or another now.

Itsuki looked out of the window again, this time more purposefully, making sure no one was there to interrupt. Nothing moved outside but the trees in the wind. If the ritual had been going ahead, the priests would have been climbing the hill around now to light the braziers, but they were all in the shrine, praying for protection, salvation, mercy. All was still.

"I wish you could hear me," Mutsuki said. Itsuki went to the bookcase, removed half a dozen books from the top shelf, and pulled out the coil of rope he'd hidden there. He stood looking down at it for a long time.

"Mutsuki," he said, "if I do this, will we be together?"

"We already are," Mutsuki said, but Itsuki didn't hear. He tested his weight on the desk, then climbed onto it, throwing the rope over the beams and standing on tiptoe to knot it.

"Maybe it'll be all right," Mutsuki said, his voice trembling. "Maybe it'll all be over. Or maybe at least you'll know I'm here."

***

"We've been wrong about a lot of things," Mutsuki said, hours later. Itsuki didn't hear.

***

Thunder rolled in the distance. Red light bloomed in the east, above Misono Hill: the braziers had been lit. The sound of the priests' chanting drifted in through the window, far and faint.

"They're going to kill her, and we can't do anything." Mutsuki said _we_ out of habit. If Itsuki was here, Mutsuki couldn't see him. They'd taken the body away, and the rest was gone, too.

"Why am I still here?" Mutsuki whispered. "Why?"

Lightning flared outside, turning all the shadows to ebony and everything else to bone. A few seconds later, thunder rumbled, closer now. It was starting to rain.

"But it'll be over soon," Mutsuki said. "It has to be over soon."

He was wrong about that, too.

***

Moonlight cast the same dark shadows across the floor, and Itsuki paced the confines of the cell. Three long steps, or four short ones. He looked out of the window, then went to the bookshelf.

"You know the rope's already up there," Mutsuki said. "You have to know. Can't you see it?"

If Itsuki could, he showed no sign. He climbed up onto the desk, knotted the rope in the place where it already hung.

"Don't say it this time," Mutsuki said.

"Please forgive me," Itsuki said, and stepped into the air.

***

Every time it was the same. A thousand times, the same: the capture, the thunder, the rope. After that Itsuki would have some sense of awareness – not of Mutsuki, but of what was happening to him, and to the village.

"It must be because you died early," Mutsuki said. "The Malice couldn't taint you the way it did the others, so you know what's happening to you."

That was more than the rest got, the ones who'd died in the Repentance. More than Sae, who came circling the storehouse once the screaming had stopped. She passed the window, the blood glaring from the front of her kimono, her hair in her face, her footsteps more silent than the rain. All she knew how to do was to trace the same pattern that had trapped them all, over and over again.

"Is it better to be like that, or to know what's happening? Sometimes I think it would be a relief not to know."

Itsuki crouched in the corner with his hands over his head, not hearing. Soon they'd be back at the beginning again – the smell of the storm in the air, and the rope. Mutsuki put his hand over Itsuki's arm, though he knew there was nothing to touch.

"Maybe it'll be different this time."

***

Itsuki walked the cell in tight, agitated circles, never once looking at Mutsuki. On the other side of the village, in the Kurosawa House, people were screaming; the sounds of their voices joined with the thunder.

This must be hell, Mutsuki thought.

"This is hell," Itsuki said to the room he thought was empty. "And it's all because of me."

Mutsuki almost smiled. "We still think the same," he said, "except I know it wasn't your fault, Itsuki."

***

It was always the same. Had it been a year, a hundred, ten thousand? Mutsuki couldn't tell. All the days were one long, unbroken night.

He hadn't spoken in a long time. It was too depressing to speak to someone who could never hear and never do anything differently. After the ritual, he'd been with Itsuki for a year, unheard, unseen, but that hadn't been like this. There had still been an end in sight then, something to hope for. There'd been the light of the sun.

"Mutsuki?"

He opened his eyes. "Here, brother," he said wearily. "Always here."

"Once you asked me what happens to twins who don't become butterflies," Itsuki whispered. "I told you not to think about it. I'm thinking about it now, though. I like to think you can hear me, or you're somewhere nearby. Nearby, but... better."

"Well, you're half-right," Mutsuki said, with a faint smile.

Itsuki drew in a shaky breath. "I keep thinking about our ritual. I can't seem to stop. Until that night I think I really believed something would happen to stop it, and I wouldn't have to..." His hands clenched convulsively. "I felt so helpless."

"I know," Mutsuki said, thinking of a rope endlessly reknotted over the beam above.

"The worst thing is, I thought it was working," Itsuki went on. "Right at the end, I... I felt your pain, like it was inside me. I thought we were becoming one. But there was no butterfly, and... I couldn't feel you any more."

Mutsuki's own memories of the night of the ritual were vague. He remembered the next morning, waking up beside Itsuki as usual, and thinking he must have dreamed the ritual – until he saw that Itsuki's hair was white, and found that no one spoke to him or looked at him.

"All I can think is that you trusted me, and I've done everything wrong," Itsuki said, his voice low and miserable.

"I've watched you die a thousand times," Mutsuki said, "always the same..."

"In my head, I've watched it a thousand times," Itsuki said. "I feel like if I can change one thing, everything will be different. But I never can."

Mutsuki said nothing to that. Sae prowled around the storehouse, restless, searching for something. Soon it would all start again. Mutsuki put his head down on his arms and closed his eyes.

***

Moonlight cast the same dark shadows across the floor, and Itsuki paced the confines of the cell. Three long steps, or four short ones. He looked out of the window, and cried out.

"Yae! What are you still doing here?"

Mutsuki looked up slowly. This hadn't happened before.

"The ritual will begin soon," Itsuki said, his hands tight around the bars. "If that happens – "

Of course, Itsuki was still caught in the tide of repetition; he didn't realise this was something new.

_If I can change one thing..._

He tried not to let himself get carried away. He didn't want to hope and then be disappointed all over again. But if _this_ could be different, who was to say that _everything_ couldn't be?

***

Everything seemed to be following the same worn path – the rope, the braziers painting the sky red, the thunderstorm. Mutsuki waited by the window, wondering if the girl would come back.

Something was happening on Misono Hill. It wasn't the darkness billowing into the sky now, but something else, a crimson cloud.

"Itsuki," he said, turning, and Itsuki looked up at him, eyes wide. He started to speak, but Mutsuki shook his head, smiling. "Never mind, just come with me. I think we can leave now."

The air outside was cool and fresh, and for the first time in years, the fog was beginning to roll back. There were stars in the sky, and crimson butterflies darted among them. They were still rising from Misono Hill, hundreds of them.

"That happened on the night of the last ceremony," Itsuki said. "When we were little, remember? We were playing hide and seek while the grown-ups were gathered inside Kurosawa House, and we looked up and saw all the butterflies like this. We didn't know what it meant."

Mutsuki remembered. Sae had wanted to go running up to the top of the hill to see where they were coming out, but nobody was permitted to go up there on the night of the ritual, so they'd gone through Tachibana House to the highest place they could think of.

"Let's go there now," he said, and Itsuki must have been thinking along the same lines, because he nodded at once, not asking where.

They found Chitose crawling out of a closet. She didn't seem to think it was strange at all that both of them should be there. "I had a bad dream," was all she said, before taking both their hands and walking between them, the way she liked.

From the Heaven Bridge they watched as the last of the butterflies lifted free of the ground and into the sky, and in the east, for the first time in a hundred years, the sun began to rise.


End file.
